The week before the onsite You got the loop scheduled. Five interviews back-to-back, probably split across two days, definitely virtual unless you are senior enough to fly. The next seven days are the gap between candidates who pass and candidates who think they prepared but did not. Here is the day-by-day plan I run before mine, refined across four onsites in the last eighteen months. Three offers, one rejection. The rejection is in here too. Day 7 — Map the loop Ask the recruiter for the list. Most will share it. You want: Each interviewer's name Their role and team The format of each session (coding, system design, behavioral, hiring manager) The duration Then look up each interviewer on LinkedIn for thirty seconds. Not stalking — context. If your system design interviewer wrote a blog post about queues, you can reference queue patterns. If your hiring manager came from the data team, the team is probably data-adjacent. This is the only research that compounds. Skip it and you walk in cold.…